“In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence (Hebrews 5:7 ESV).”

There has always been a lot of debate among Christians from all backgrounds, in particular about what it is that makes a person's prayer effective. Some think that, to be effective, a prayer must be very specific, stating in great detail exactly what the praying person is asking for.  Others are of the opinion the greater the number of people praying for the same thing, the greater the chances are that the thing that they are praying for will come to pass. There are some who feel that your prayers are more effective if you fast while you are praying and in this way show God that you are really serious about your prayer.

But if we really want to know what makes for effective prayer, it might serve us well to look beyond all of the people we know and all of their theories and to fix our attention on the divine example of Jesus. Certainly, His prayer was effective.  What was His "secret"--what was it that made His prayer effective? The writer to the Hebrews speaks about the effectiveness of Jesus' prayer.  He attributes the effectiveness of our Savior's prayer not to any of the things that I've already mentioned, but he simply says of the Lord:  "Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence."  As we focus our attention on these words of Scripture this morning, let's listen especially for what they have to say to us about how we should pray and to whom we should pray.

 If we're going to use our Lord's prayer life as our example and guide, it quickly becomes clear to us that we are to pray fervently.  We read of Jesus in the text that He "offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears."  It's not any kind of manufactured emotion that we are being told about here; it is rather the constancy and the intensity with which Jesus prayed.  Prayer is hard work.  It is hard work because it is not merely a matter saying "gimme" followed by a laundry list of whatever it is that we've decided we'd like to have, nor is it a matter of trying to "win God over" to our way of thinking.  Genuine prayer is an honest seeking after the will of the Lord--a wrestling with our own desires in order to bring them into harmony with the good and gracious will of God.  Prayer is a struggling--most often with ourselves--as we seek not necessarily what we want, but what we need--what will bring glory to the God of heaven and earth.  This is the kind of prayer that we see so clearly when our Savior prays to His Father in the garden of Gethsemane.

The writer to the Hebrews tells us something else about the prayer life of Jesus: "He was heard because of His reverence."  "His reverence" was the submission of His will to the will of the Father.  What we are being told about here is what we ourselves say every time that we pray the Lord's Prayer:  "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven".  When Jesus, in Gethsemane prayed the words: "not as I will, but as You will" 

But even the most fervent and humble prayer in the world will be to no avail unless it is offered to someone who has the power, ability, and willingness to help.  Jesus, we are told in the text, prayed "to Him who was able to save Him from death."  It makes absolutely no sense at all--not even on a purely human level--to place your trust and confidence in someone who is powerless to help you. 

This God to whom we pray hears and answers our prayer not because we pray with such eloquence or because of the number of people we have recruited to pray with us or because of our fasting or because of anything else that has to do with us.  He hears and answers us for the sake of His Son--the One who reconciled sinners like us to God so that we might be His dear children. The "secret" of offering up prayers that will be heard by God is really no secret at all.  God hears and answers our prayers for the same reason and in the same way that He heard and answered the prayers of Jesus.  He hears and answers because of what Jesus did for us and He hears and answers according to His good and gracious will.